When I took the Windlenook project on its very first outing to the Maker Faire last November, I had to hook it up to an old MRC power pack. I’d attempted to get an Arduino-based joystick throttle working at the last minute, and couldn’t get it to respond. I finally revisited the throttle circuit after New Year’s, and discovered that it was just a few code errors away from working. Oh, well. (more…)
I’ve been wanting a Baldwin Centipede in N scale for 30 years, and finally, there’s one coming out soon. I had the money in my hands, but let the opportunity slip past. I bought an oscilloscope instead.
Did you know that you don’t actually need a Digital Command Control station to run your decoder-equipped locomotives? Use the power pack you already have. Just turn the speed knob up all the way, and encode the commands manually by flipping the direction switch back and forth, at about 8,000 times per second. If you do the timings precisely enough, your decoder-equipped locomotives will respond appropriately. What could be simpler?
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For me, it’s back to electronics this week. If you’ve seen my past layout projects, you’ll know that I like built-in throttles. I did it with the GVC ten years ago, and again with Lynn’s railroad. That’s simple enough to do with a homebuilt DC circuit, but will the rise of Digital Command Control change all that?
Ahh, you’ve noticed that I’ve been on a bit of a throttle jag lately. I just couldn’t help myself on this one. I saw the APDS-9960 RGB and Gesture Sensor in a recent SparkFun new-products announcement, and immediately knew what to do with it.
Would you like to build your own version of the automated, Arduino-based throttle I recently built for Chuck’s layout? Well, read on!
Furniture Railroads 